3 Skills Everyone Has & Need to Improve
An Easy Way to level up any Career
When you research polymaths, you get Da Vinci, Newton, Galileo, Noam Chomsky, Maya Angelou, many people who excelled at different fields from acting to civil rights to physics to anatomy to painting to engineering.
It’s easy to get discouraged to try and become a Polymath, but it’s easier than you think. If you start with the 3 skills everyone has — only a few get paid to do these — and improve them, you’ll have an easier time seeing the connections between different fields and professions.
A polymath is someone who draws wisdom from different fields to reach a goal. Here are good places to start making connections.
1. Asking Question & Research:
Everyone asks questions to find information, and it is a skill anyone can master.
The best questioners and researchers are journalists and reference librarians. Journalists get paid to ask questions and research their topics, and reference librarians get paid to research. They work hand in hand.
Reference librarians can be easily accessed using the Library of Congress’s website if you’re in the US. For outside the US, check local university libraries and search “reference librarian resource” on Google.
I recommend the book Talk to Me by Dean Nelson — reporter with the Boston Globe. A book meant for first year journalism students in university, Nelson describes in detail how to conduct interviews, how to research, how to ask questions, and the nuances in journalism missed by YouTube.
2. Marketing & Selling:
From a job interview, proposing an idea, or convincing someone to do something you want, everyone sells. Here are 3 ways to approach improving your marketing and selling skills.
Dive into Marketing:
Marketing spans advertisements, social media outreach, anything to sell products to consumers. Marketing is based on human connection and providing value to customers.
Here are 2 books that can help build your marketing skills:
To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink
Pink describes the six successors to the elevator pitch, the three rules for understanding another's perspective, the five frames that can make your message clearer and more persuasive, and much more.
This is Marketing by Seth Godin
Godin describes using his concise and experienced style on building trust and permission with your target market & achieving your goals by helping others become who they want to be.
Dive into Psychology of Choices & Persuasion:
Another approach to marketing and selling is starting with the art of persuasion and psychology.
Switch, shows how everyday people—employees and managers, parents and nurses—can implement systems and strategies to change minds and achieve amazing results.
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
Dan Ariely describes the susceptibility of human decision making to irrationality and what factors impact our choices. refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways.
Dive into the Art of Crafting an Argument:
The 3rd way to develop marketing and selling is to learn how to craft an argument like a lawyer using the syllogisms and reasoning used in court cases.
Making your Case by Antoine Scalia & Bryan A. Garner
It presents the basics of writing legal briefs and giving oral arguments, with discussions on the essentials of building a case through legal reasoning and the key elements of persuasive and successful oral pleading in the courtroom.
3. Writing:
If you have written an email, a text, a letter, a speech, notes, you are a writer. Practicing writing will improve your communication skills, ability to think clearly & express your ideas, ask questions/research, and market/sell to others.
Writing is a cornerstone skill to build to compound other skills.
The best way to build writing is to write. You can start with journaling or writing 10 ideas each day or writing short stories or writing on social media or start a weekly newsletter :)